Chapter 4 focuses on eight perpetrators of familicide (7 male, one female) drawn from 77 cases (76 being male perpetrators) exhibiting a prior history of domestic violence and varying degrees of ...
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Chapter 4 focuses on eight perpetrators of familicide (7 male, one female) drawn from 77 cases (76 being male perpetrators) exhibiting a prior history of domestic violence and varying degrees of livid coercion. The author examines the early socialization of offenders, perpetrators’ searches for intimacy, including the lure of romance, and the parts played by aggressive and hostile, livid coercive behavior, sexual jealousy and obsessive attempts to control their partners. These outwardly intimate arrangements required much impression management, with livid coercive hearts evidencing intense shame, rage, and depression. Victim maneuverability, resistance, and agency are consistent themes and convey a strong sense of the contingent nature of domination and the problems associated with commonly used notions of “control” in violent interpersonal relationships. The discussion of the actual killings raises the possibility that familicide fleetingly dissipates or dissolves unbearable feelings of humiliated fury, recovering, momentarily, a lonely patina of pride.Less

Livid Coercive Hearts

Neil Websdale

Published in print: 2010-01-12

Chapter 4 focuses on eight perpetrators of familicide (7 male, one female) drawn from 77 cases (76 being male perpetrators) exhibiting a prior history of domestic violence and varying degrees of livid coercion. The author examines the early socialization of offenders, perpetrators’ searches for intimacy, including the lure of romance, and the parts played by aggressive and hostile, livid coercive behavior, sexual jealousy and obsessive attempts to control their partners. These outwardly intimate arrangements required much impression management, with livid coercive hearts evidencing intense shame, rage, and depression. Victim maneuverability, resistance, and agency are consistent themes and convey a strong sense of the contingent nature of domination and the problems associated with commonly used notions of “control” in violent interpersonal relationships. The discussion of the actual killings raises the possibility that familicide fleetingly dissipates or dissolves unbearable feelings of humiliated fury, recovering, momentarily, a lonely patina of pride.

This book provides an introduction to socio-legal forms of mitigation in capital sentencing. It examines scientific formulations, concepts, and frameworks for structuring social history ...
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This book provides an introduction to socio-legal forms of mitigation in capital sentencing. It examines scientific formulations, concepts, and frameworks for structuring social history investigations and assessments of moral culpability. A fundamental aim of this book is to provide mitigation professionals not only with an understanding of the context of mitigation in criminal justice thinking, but also ways of contextualizing issues of blame and culpability. Cases are used to illustrate how to identify, evaluate, and present mitigation evidence in assessing issues of culpability in the mitigation of punishment in death penalty cases. It also exposes mitigation professionals to recent developments in the social sciences with implications for assessing issues of practical rationality, diminished volition, unfortunate forms of socialization, criminal propensities, socio-cultural deprivation, and gang involvement. These topics are linked with legal and philosophical conceptions of moral culpability that offer mitigation professionals new ways of thinking about both proximal and remote forms of mitigation. These socially oriented lenses, used in examining these concepts and legal issues, offer alternative ways of thinking about issues of capacity, choice, and character in assessing diminished forms of moral culpability. The book concludes with recommendations for future research and other strategies for promoting the improvement of practice in the field of capital mitigation.Less

Death Penalty Mitigation : A Handbook for Mitigation Specialists, Investigators, Social Scientists, and Lawyers

Jose B. AshfordMelissa Kupferberg

Published in print: 2013-09-05

This book provides an introduction to socio-legal forms of mitigation in capital sentencing. It examines scientific formulations, concepts, and frameworks for structuring social history investigations and assessments of moral culpability. A fundamental aim of this book is to provide mitigation professionals not only with an understanding of the context of mitigation in criminal justice thinking, but also ways of contextualizing issues of blame and culpability. Cases are used to illustrate how to identify, evaluate, and present mitigation evidence in assessing issues of culpability in the mitigation of punishment in death penalty cases. It also exposes mitigation professionals to recent developments in the social sciences with implications for assessing issues of practical rationality, diminished volition, unfortunate forms of socialization, criminal propensities, socio-cultural deprivation, and gang involvement. These topics are linked with legal and philosophical conceptions of moral culpability that offer mitigation professionals new ways of thinking about both proximal and remote forms of mitigation. These socially oriented lenses, used in examining these concepts and legal issues, offer alternative ways of thinking about issues of capacity, choice, and character in assessing diminished forms of moral culpability. The book concludes with recommendations for future research and other strategies for promoting the improvement of practice in the field of capital mitigation.

This chapter reviews literature emanating from both feminist scholars and from a growing body of research in the field of men's studies, sometimes also known as the study of masculinities. Feminist ...
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This chapter reviews literature emanating from both feminist scholars and from a growing body of research in the field of men's studies, sometimes also known as the study of masculinities. Feminist literature, combined with masculinity studies, have much to offer an analysis of child sexual abuse by Catholic clergy. By emphasizing power and powerlessness in relation to structured social relations, such as the position of a child relative to an adult, or the position of a child relative to a minister of the Catholic Church, feminists and masculinities scholars have highlighted the power dimension to a discussion that heretofore may have lacked such an analytical frame. More recent feminist theories and scholarship on masculinities have brought something new to this analysis, especially those aspects that suggest that individuals do not inhabit single categories, such as gender, but are much more complexly positioned in life, in relation to race, class, sexual orientation, religion, age, physical appearance, fitness, and mental ability. This recent feminist and masculinities literature gives rise to the idea that power relations are rather more complex than might have been originally suggested, when power was conceptualized solely in terms of domination or coercion.Less

Power and Gender

Marie Keenan

Published in print: 2011-12-01

This chapter reviews literature emanating from both feminist scholars and from a growing body of research in the field of men's studies, sometimes also known as the study of masculinities. Feminist literature, combined with masculinity studies, have much to offer an analysis of child sexual abuse by Catholic clergy. By emphasizing power and powerlessness in relation to structured social relations, such as the position of a child relative to an adult, or the position of a child relative to a minister of the Catholic Church, feminists and masculinities scholars have highlighted the power dimension to a discussion that heretofore may have lacked such an analytical frame. More recent feminist theories and scholarship on masculinities have brought something new to this analysis, especially those aspects that suggest that individuals do not inhabit single categories, such as gender, but are much more complexly positioned in life, in relation to race, class, sexual orientation, religion, age, physical appearance, fitness, and mental ability. This recent feminist and masculinities literature gives rise to the idea that power relations are rather more complex than might have been originally suggested, when power was conceptualized solely in terms of domination or coercion.